Speaker 1: ry small but very significant change in the outlook for the 2022 midterms over the
last 48 hours. And that change is that for the first time in these midterms by a very,
very, very small margin, the FiveThirtyEight Senate forecast has Democrats projected to
hold control of the United States Senate. And this would be huge historically,
and it would be huge practically because of everything that's on the table looking at 2022
and 2024. So we're going to go through it piece by piece. Newsweek noticing this with an article
Democrats favored to win Senate for first time as polling improves per FiveThirtyEight. And indeed,
when we look at the FiveThirtyEight update, we now see that they correctly call it a toss up
in the sense that the margin is so small that you can't say it is a big advantage for Democrats. But
the most likely scenario of 100 outcomes is that Democrats win 52 seats out of 100, which would
actually give Democrats a bigger advantage in the Senate than they currently have. Remember,
currently it is a 5050 Senate with Kamala Harris as the tie breaking vote. As the vice president,
who is the president of the Senate in cases of 5050, doesn't do much for Democrats when you
need 60 votes, as you do for many legislative activities. But it does make a significant
it is an advantage. It is a majority when you have 5050 situations. Now, as we know,
for 5050 situations, you need every Democrat on board, including Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema.
That is a story for a different day, which we have covered extensively. So what is what are the
repercussions? What is the impact of this? Let's first talk about historical context, number one.
When a party wins the White House, taking it from the other party in a presidential election,
they almost always lose in the first midterms. So looking at a historical precedent, Joe Biden,
Democrats took the White House from Trump and Republicans in 2020. Democrats should
lose and do poorly in the November 22 midterms. I think when we spoke to political scientist Rachel
Bitter Carper on the show. She said there's only like three examples in history of where it went a
different way. So if indeed Democrats are able to retain control, expand the majority in the Senate,
not lose power, that would already be historically anomalous or anomalous, and it would signify that
something different is taking place. Now, what might that something be? There's two analyzes that
are possible. One would be, if Democrats don't do terribly in November, it will be because of
the temporary Trump constituency that only cared about Trump. And now they've bailed.
And things have gone sort of back to, quote, normal. That would be one possible analysis. The
other possible analysis would be that is not the explanation. The explanation would be Democrats
would have lost were it not for Roe v Wade being overturned, very unpopular with Americans and
nothing being done on gun safety despite prominent mass shooting after prominent mass shooting.
Two issues abortion and guns that are not typically good issues for Democrats in elections
this time around, polling suggests, might actually be good issues. Now, all of this
is hypothetical. All of this is if Democrats manage to retain control in one or both houses.
And as you can see, the margin is very, very, very small. So this call it a 52% chance. You know,
we can interpret these numbers in a lot of different ways. And some of them are not,
strictly speaking, statistically accurate, but call it a 52% chance. When I see 52%,
I believe it is correct to call it a toss up. And remember that Hillary Clinton, based on these
models, had an 85% chance of winning in 2016. The results fell in the other 15%. Now, it doesn't
mean that the estimates were wrong. Something that's 85% likely to happen might not happen.
But the point is, when we say 52%, it's basically a coin flip and it's going to come down to
who votes. Who votes? Everyone must vote. Everyone must vote. And we are going to be highlighting the
key races on which control of the Senate could hinge. There are disagreements among some about.
In particular right now, is it more important for Democrats to keep control of the House or
keep control of the Senate on the Senate? The argument would be more legislative. In the House,
the argument would be more about preventing all of these bogus investigations into Joe Biden,
into Anthony Fauci, maybe even into Hunter Biden. Why the House would investigate Hunter Biden,
who has nothing to do with the administration. I still could tell you, but there are differing
opinions about which side of Congress would be more important to control. I believe it is both.
And no, no race should be conceded, no race should be ignored. But we should also be strategic,
particularly in the Senate, because it's likely to hinge on just a handful of races. So if you
want to say this is good news, you absolutely can. Democrats should be losing. If you want to
say it's bad news, you could also make that case. And the bad news would be,
despite all of the abandonment of the Republican Party, of any substantive policy,
despite the fact that they're not even pretending to try to think about being productive members
of a legislative body, they still might take control of the Senate. And so you can find
the good or the bad in this. As with most most cases, there's a little bit of both.
But the opportunity is here for an unusual event historically, which is Democrats
win the White House and they don't lose control of everything in the next midterms.